5
Tutties Neuk

Tutties Neuk had been bought over recently, but a comprehensive facelift hadn’t stopped the dregs of Arbroath FC’s fan base popping in for their traditional few pints before the match across the road at Gayfield. The pub now advertised the fact that it served food, but when David entered the mobbed, hazy bar, full of nervous energy and the familiar comfort of a pre-match ritual carried out for countless years, there was no sign of anyone taking anything other than liquid refreshment.

The tables were given over to old-timers nursing pints and nips, chain-smoking with sickly yellow fingers, their dedication to the cause respected by the younger ones who stood around in footy tops and scarves, with close-cropped hair, downing pints and glancing up at the English premiership match on the television in the corner. The three middle-aged women behind the bar glided effortlessly and efficiently between each other, providing pints and banter as required.

David had missed breakfast. Still buzzing a little from the extended whisky nightcap, he had tottered gently out the door of the Fairport, avoiding any contact with Gillian with a hard ‘G’. A blast of sun-soaked fresh air sobered him up and the memory of holding Nicola outside her folks’ house put a wide smile on his face. He’d strolled past the railway, through the High Common and down the hill to Tutties, an ancient, pebble-dashed, whitewashed building sitting exposed next to the main Dundee Road, which carved through the town turning north.

So here he was, in the pub again. Could be worse, he thought. He had a quick look for Gary, not at all sure that he would recognize him, then headed to the bar and got a pint in. After a couple of big gulps he felt a tap on his shoulder.

Gary Spink had not taken the years well. He had always been a frail kind of figure, but these days he looked positively apologetic about still drawing breath from the atmosphere. He was small, several inches shorter than David, and seemed even smaller by virtue of a slouch which was a long way towards becoming an old man’s hunch. He wore dirty trainers, worn-out jeans, a lumberjack shirt and a cheap-looking Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap. He had a scratchy, half-hearted goatee which made his face look dirty, something compounded by greying, lopsided teeth in a thin-lipped smile. He removed the cap and ran a bony hand through his thinning hair before replacing it. He had a downtrodden air and a weasly way of moving. It wasn’t a good look.

‘David,’ he said in a gentle voice, almost a whisper. ‘You’re looking well.’

‘You too,’ said David. ‘Pint?’

‘Lager, cheers.’

They found a table in the corner, next to the newly painted gents toilets, and sat down. David tried to dredge up what he could about Gary’s life from his memory. Hadn’t he stayed in Arbroath, working for a bank or something? He had been good with numbers at school, as well as something else, but David couldn’t remember what. He had always been the put-upon character out of the four of them in the ADS, and behind his back they had called him Snarf, after the comedy character from Thundercats. Thinking about it now, David realized the way the three of them treated Gary back then was a gentle, latent kind of bullying – never treating him as an equal to themselves, always taking advantage of his demure nature. It was pathetic really, but wasn’t it just the way all boys are growing up? Taking advantage if they can? He felt a pang of guilt in his stomach and took a swig of lager.

‘So, how’s it going?’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Gary, sipping gently at his pint and lighting up a fag. He offered across the table but David waved the pack away. ‘It’s good to see you again. After all this time, eh? Quite something.’

‘Yeah, suppose.’

‘So what have you been up to?’

David was already sick of recapping the last fifteen years of his life, but he had honed it to a nippy forty seconds of bare facts, and he gave the spiel to Gary.

‘What about yourself?’

‘Oh, you know, nothing too exciting. You can’t get up to anything too exciting in this place. I’m still working for the Royal Bank. Slow progress up the career ladder, all that shite.’

‘No wife? Kids?’

‘Well.’ Gary looked sheepish. ‘There is a wife. Kind of.’

David looked at him. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Spill it.’

‘Five years ago I saved up enough money and holidays to take an extended trip to the Far East. Three months I was over there. Anyway, I met someone while I was out, a Cambodian girl called Lee. Well, long story short, we got married while we were there and she came back to Arbroath with me.’

‘That must’ve got the town gossips going.’

‘Not as much as a month after we got back, when she emptied my bank account and disappeared. I’ve never seen or heard from her since.’

Fuck’s sake. David felt sorry for Gary, but almost spluttered his pint nevertheless. It was such a clichéd story: emotionally stunted Westerner gets taken for a ride by shyster looking for a free ticket into Britain. But the cliché of it didn’t stop it hurting, he supposed, and he could see it still rankled with Gary that he’d been fished in so gullibly.

‘I know, I know,’ said Gary. ‘Don’t think I haven’t heard it a million times before, especially from my mum. The folks around here think I’m a fucking joke, I’m used to that. Gary Spink – gullible arsehole. But, well…’

He seemed to give up on what he was saying, ending with a shrug and a sip of his pint.

‘Fuck this town,’ said David, warming to Gary all of a sudden. Fifteen years ago, when he was part of this town, David had treated Gary shabbily, when he was supposed to have been his friend. It was too late, but maybe he could at least make up for it in some way by taking Gary’s side against this place now.

Gary was nervously removing his cap and swiping at his strands of hair, and David realized what a good idea it had been to leave when he did. This town had worn Gary down – he looked at least forty, rather than the thirty-four he actually was. He had smoked three fags since they’d sat down, each one devoured with a hunger born of depressing addiction. He wasn’t enjoying them, he was just smoking them because he had to.

‘You did the right thing, leaving Arbroath,’ said Gary, as if reading David’s thoughts. ‘This place is fucking useless, it sucks the life out of you, so it does.’

‘Why don’t you leave, then?’

Gary’s face lightened, his features seeming to come into focus as the fag smoke cleared. ‘Funny you should say that. I’m planning on doing exactly that.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, you remember I was always good at art back in school?’ Art, that was it, thought David. ‘I never really got a portfolio together, but I’m doing it now, painting and drawing, and I’m going to apply to art college as soon as I’ve got enough decent stuff to show.’

It didn’t sound the most convincing plan David had ever heard, and considering Gary had spent fifteen years penpushing in a small town, he suspected this was a pie in the sky plan that would never come to anything. But then, what the hell did he know about Gary’s life?

‘Sounds great,’ he said, waving his empty glass. ‘Another pint?’

‘I’ll get them,’ said Gary, and shuffled off towards the bar.

David felt exposed without Gary’s puny frame between him and the pub, and he was eliciting stares from the other punters in the place. He kept his eyes on the television until Gary returned. Another snippet of Gary’s life came to him as he started his second pint.

‘How’s your sister doing?’

Gary had a sister, a very cute sister a couple of years younger than them, one of the main reasons that the rest of them had hung about with Gary, truth be told. Despite being two years older than his sister, Gary had always seemed like the runt of the litter as far as the Spinks were concerned. Susan was outgoing, vivacious, always smiling and happy and finding the good in people. She was brainy too, David remembered, one of the brightest in her year. Naturally she’d got all the attention, with her attractive yet unthreatening looks, her effortless charm and her exam results. It couldn’t have been easy for Gary, living in the shadow of a younger sister all those years, but he never seemed to resent Susan’s assumed status as the successful one in the family.

‘She’s in Prague. Did languages at Glasgow Uni and has been travelling ever since. Amsterdam, Sicily, Lisbon – all over the place. Now she’s working for the British Embassy in Prague, something pretty high up. Handy for the odd holiday. She definitely had the right idea, getting out of here.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do the same. What sort of stuff are you drawing?’

‘Dunno, whatever comes into my head. Kind of fantasy graphic stuff, I suppose.’ Gary clammed up, unwilling or unable to talk about something so close to him. The word ‘fantasy’ didn’t exactly fill David with confidence for Gary’s chances of art college, but you never know, he thought. Better change the subject.

‘How’s the folks?’

‘Fine, fine. Still working. Mum’s a cleaner at the school and Dad’s now a security guard up at the hospital. Works nights. I still live with them, did I tell you?’ David raised his eyebrows. ‘I know, it’s pathetic. I was going to get my own place, but… well I don’t know… stuff kept getting in the way.’

David waved this away. ‘You don’t have to explain anything to me,’ he said. ‘Live where you like. Besides, if you’re getting out of here, what does it matter?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Here’s to getting the fuck out of Arbroath, then.’

‘Cheers.’

They clunked pints and finished off what was left in the bottom of the glasses. David got up to get another round in, and Gary gently but firmly held on to his arm.

‘You know, it’s good to see you again,’ he said, suddenly serious. David felt awkward standing there, looking down at Gary’s wonky teeth and scrotey beard.

‘It’s good to be here,’ he said, because he felt he ought to say something.

Every other square inch of Scotland was basking in unlikely summer heat but, despite the unbroken sunshine, Gayfield Park was somehow still cold, windy and wet. The most exposed football ground in the country, the rickety old maroon and white stadium sat precariously on the edge of the sea, just a few hundred yards down the coast from the harbour which reputedly used to shine the beacon that the team’s nickname, the Red Lichties, derived from. They were close enough to the waterfront for the salty fish smell to reach their nostrils and the occasional sea spray from the waves to gradually soak them through to their skins. The wind whipped in off the North Sea relatively calmly, but it was still enough to cancel out any warmth from an unconcerned sun that sat so high in the sky it looked as if it was set for life up there.

The mince on show before their eyes wasn’t helping, David thought. The Scottish premier league that he watched on television was dire stuff, but this was a hundred times worse. It had been so long since he’d been exposed to third division football that he was almost shaking with the shock of how rank it was. It seemed barely any higher up the skill ladder than a park kickabout, both Arbroath and Montrose teams (deadly local Angus rivals) consisting of a mish-mash of hapless young kids in ridiculous fin haircuts or mullets, and old warhorses thickening around the middle and never shy about leading with the studs up in a way that, years of experience told them, would make maximum carnage of the opponents’ legs.

Still, it was entertaining in its singular dreadfulness, and the relatively good weather had led to a healthy crowd of around four hundred home fans and the same again of travelling support, both sets of supporters enjoying swearing at the tops of their voices at everyone and everything imaginable, occasionally to a jaunty little tune.

Gary and David were standing on the crumbling terrace beside a rusting, ramshackle metal stanchion and soaking up the atmosphere. Sadly, Montrose had gone into an early lead after a dodgy offside decision and the old-timers and kids alike were letting their feelings be known to the poor bastard in the black. Arbroath’s bright young hope of a centre forward had the unlikely surname of Brazil, the irony of which was not lost on both sets of supporters, both sides giving him pelters every time he skied a ball high and wide, either into the sea at one side or onto the main road at the other. It had been a long time since David had stood on a terrace at a match like this, and he found the experience incredibly comforting – the smell of piss, the air full of profanity, the occasional witty one-liner from someone who looked like they couldn’t even tie their shoelaces. This was the real heart of Scottish football, he thought to himself.

Watching the football made David think sentimentally about Colin. He’d been on the club’s books when he died. It was impossible not to think of that. Of course anything could happen in a football career. Colin could’ve been injured early on and dropped out of the game, or maybe the drink and small-town hero worship would’ve got to him. Maybe he just wouldn’t have been able to cut it, or he might’ve ended up like one of these hatchet men on the park at the moment, gradually drifting further back in the side until he was the two-footed stopper at the centre of defence. Or he could’ve signed for a bigger club, then a bigger one, his ambitions taking him to the premier league, such as it was, and maybe international honours, whatever that was worth in the current climate, with the dire state of the national team. Ifs and buts. David knew it was pointless speculating, but he momentarily enjoyed the pointlessness of it, drowning in a soporific sea of possibilities.

‘Reckon Colin would’ve done better than this shower of shite?’ he said. He noticed a tightening of Gary’s jaw.

‘Couldn’t have done much worse.’

There was a pause. Gary didn’t seem too comfortable with the subject but David continued anyway, the booze having made him chatty.

‘Do you ever think about him? About what happened at the cliffs?’

There was another pause as Gary studiously followed the match even though action had stopped for an injury in the middle of the park. Eventually he spoke.

‘Sometimes. Not so much these days.’

‘I know what you mean. I was the same, until this reunion came along. I mean, no offence, but I hadn’t really thought about anyone from Arbroath for a while until I heard about the reunion. I thought maybe it would’ve been different for you, staying here. I thought there might’ve been more jogging of your memory about Colin.’ Another long pause. ‘Well, has there been?’

Gary slowly turned to David and he had a glassy look in his eyes, as if his mind were somewhere else. ‘No, not really. It’s best not to think about these things. Accidents happen, that’s all there is to it. Talking about it now isn’t going to bring Colin back, is it? In the end, it doesn’t matter if he fell, jumped or was pushed. He’s dead, and all the wondering in the world about what happened that night isn’t going to change that fact.’

‘He fell,’ said David pointedly.

Gary seemed to come out of his trance, and fixed a surprisingly clear eye on David.

‘You don’t know that for sure, do you? No one will ever know that for sure.’

‘I know.’

Gary shook his head, almost imperceptibly, then turned back towards the game.

‘No. You don’t.’

The half-time whistle blew, and a rush of Arbroath fans headed for the exits, piling across the road to Tutties for a traditional half-time pint. David and Gary joined the throng, got their pints in and stood against the outside wall of the pub, soaking up the sunshine as cars swished past on the Dundee Road. Another hustle back across the road and they were there for the second half. It was probably the only ground in the country where a half-time pint was possible, something the Arbroath fans were immensely proud of. Despite still losing 1–0 they sang more vocally than before, Gary and David joining in with a slapdash rendition of ‘There’s Ducks on Keptie Pond’. As if to repay their support, Brazil raced into the box from the left-hand side and latched onto a loose ball to put Arbroath equal. Gary, David and the rest of the fans leapt and shouted and cheered until they were hoarse, bouncing and taunting the Montrose lot. Six pints down and back on level terms, David thought – could be worse.

As the jubilation died down, he noticed for the first time that most of the advertising hoardings around the ground were blank except for a couple of local pub signs and a large recruitment board for the Royal Marines. It made him think instantly of Neil.

‘Ever see Neil Cargill these days?’ he said.

A look that David couldn’t quite pin down seemed to flash across Gary’s face before he quickly regained his composure, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets as he eventually spoke.

‘Not really. I’ve bumped into him once or twice in pubs over the years. But I think he keeps himself to himself, pretty much.’

‘I take it he did join the Marines, all those years ago.’

Gary seemed to sigh, as if already tired of the subject.

‘Yeah, he did. Fought in the first Gulf War, apparently. At one point he was a copper as well, I think. Not sure what he does now. I heard he lived out Auchmithie way, for a while. Bit of a recluse.’

‘Really? Doesn’t sound like Neil,’ said David.

Gary turned and fixed his gaze on David for a second time.

‘People do change, you know. Just because you haven’t thought about us for fifteen years doesn’t mean we’ve been frozen in time.’

David was surprised by Gary’s tone, which was bitter yet firm, as if that was the end of the topic. He looked at Gary, who was back watching the football again. Maybe he had misjudged him, thought David. He realized now he’d felt a condescending sympathy for Gary earlier in the pub, something which was misplaced. Gary, Neil, Nicola, Colin, the whole fucking town and the whole situation, it was worth a lot more than his condescension, which was pretty much all he’d been giving it so far. He had considered himself above all this, observing the town’s inhabitants as if from a great height, pissing on them righteously. What did he have to be so righteous about?

He turned back to watch the football. As he did, Brazil skied another shot miles over their heads and out the ground, and David joined in the lusty hoots of derision around him, smiling as he did so.

Back in Tutties the mood was light-hearted and boisterous. After all, the sun was shining outside and Arbroath hadn’t been beaten by those Montrose bastards from up the road. David and Gary got another round in and snaffled the table next to the puggy. A teenager was compulsively firing pound coins into the machine, but getting nothing back.

‘David, isn’t it? David Lindsay?’

They turned from watching the depressed kid at the puggy and saw Mr Bowman, their old maths teacher. Mr Bowman had been one of the cooler teachers when they’d been at school, and he’d been in the teachers’ five-a-side team that they’d played against in sixth year. He must’ve been about mid-thirties back then, which meant he was pushing fifty now. The five-a-sides was meant to be a relaxed lunchtime kickabout but gradually took on a terrible, competitive seriousness, the teachers trying (and mostly failing) to prove they still had it in them to beat this handful of cheeky upstart kids. It was an open secret that Mr Bowman had a budding drink problem back then, and he was clearly in a shambolic state now. The man’s eyes were a watery scarlet colour, as if a vodka–blood mixture would pour out the sockets at any moment, and his nose was a similar colour, the pigment leeching across his cheeks to his ears. His hair was thin, straggly and ash grey, and he wore mismatched suit trousers and jacket, both of which had green and brown stains all over them. He swayed that sway of the habitual drunk, moving his arms in an involuntary, syncopated way to balance the movements his unsteady legs were producing in his helpless torso.

David was surprised he had recognized him. But years of drinking practice had clearly imbued Mr Bowman with the capacity not only to cope with his alcoholic state but to positively revel in it, to the extent that if you took the booze away from him he might not survive the traumatic separation.

‘And Gary Spink, isn’t it?’

Despite being bloodshot, his eyes were keenly focussed, while his speech was clear and, by Christ, he was good at the names-to-faces game. David tried to do a quick calculation in his head of the number of pupils Mr Bowman must’ve had over the years, but he’d taken a fair pint himself and gave up almost as soon as he started.

‘Mr Bowman, how’s it going?’ he said.

‘Call me Jack, please. Mind if I take a seat?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, and slumped with expert lack of grace onto a spare stool at their table. The table wobbled a little as he nudged it, and a heavy glass ashtray rattled as he banged his pint down.

‘It’s quite a coincidence, meeting you two here,’ he said.

‘Oh yeah?’ said Gary, finding his voice. ‘How so?’

‘I was just thinking about Colin – Colin Anderson – and that whole terrible business at the cliffs all those years ago.’

Jesus Christ, thought David, was this going to come up every time he met anyone?

‘It could happen all over again, you see.’

‘What?’ David couldn’t see at all. ‘What are you talking about?’

Jack fished a rolled-up newspaper out his back pocket and slowly unfolded it on the table. It was the local weekly rag which rarely had any news in it. When he had it flat, he twirled the paper towards the pair of them and stuck a chubby, greasy finger on the page.

The headline read ‘Tombstoning Teenagers Risk Lives for Kicks’, and as David and Gary read down, they exchanged a look of disbelief which left them gaping at the paper slack-jawed. A craze had started amongst teenage boys, the article said, for jumping off the Arbroath cliffs into the sea at high tide. There had been several incidents witnessed by people walking their dogs and such like, kids apparently chucking themselves straight off the cliff face and falling up to two hundred feet into the water below. A spokesman for the coastguard said that in the office they had nicknamed it ‘tombstoning’ because it was ‘one of the fastest ways of killing yourself’. There was more to the story, padding about the various incidents and quotes from gormless witnesses. As Gary scanned the paper, David looked up at Jack. The combination of umpteen pints and a quick change of focus made him feel very drunk, and he leant his hand against the table firmly to get his balance back.

‘Fucking idiots,’ he said.

‘My thoughts precisely,’ said Jack. ‘But it really is taking off, if you’ll pardon the pun. There have been quite a few sightings of kids doing this, and although no one’s been formally identified, I’m sure several of them are in our current fifth and sixth years.’

‘It’s like the Darwin awards, isn’t it?’ said Gary. ‘A fantastically stupid way to die.’

‘Well, no one’s died yet, thank God, but it will surely only be a matter of time.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said David. ‘This has nothing to do with Colin. He fell. And he was on his own and drunk, so it’s hardly the same thing, is it?’

‘Nevertheless, it is connected,’ said Jack. ‘I believe the craze has grown up around the legend of Colin’s death. God only knows how or why, but the boys today revere Colin for some reason, see him as a tragically fated local hero.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Gary. ‘How do you know, if you don’t know who’s doing it?’

‘Graffiti. The last few months have seen graffiti appearing all over the place relating to Colin’s death. “Colin Anderson R. I. P., died a hero” had to be wiped off a wall at the school. References to “The Tombstoners” are scratched into walls and desks all over the place. And I believe there was similar stuff up at his gravestone and the memorial at the cliffs too, which the council had to remove sharpish.’

‘That’s insane,’ said David. ‘Colin didn’t jump and he wasn’t a fucking hero. He didn’t have a death wish and he wasn’t a fucking adrenalin junkie.’ He was getting angry now and shouting, and people were starting to look over in the direction of their table, all except the kid at the puggy, still plugging in the quids. ‘He was just a mate and his death was a stupid accident.’

‘I know that,’ said Jack, swigging his pint. ‘And you both know that, but it seems these boys don’t know that. Who knows how these things start, but I fear it’ll take someone dying for it to stop, and maybe not even then.’

‘Can’t you speak to them?’ said Gary.

‘Why would they listen to teachers?’ Jack took another large swig from his pint and a sly look came over his face. ‘Maybe if one of you came to school to speak to the fifth and sixth years, you know, as a friend of Colin’s, to explain that he didn’t jump. That might help the situation.’

David and Gary suddenly both felt fished in. Jack had clearly thought of the idea as soon as he’d seen them, and had been leading up to it from the start. The crafty alky bastard, thought David. Well, he won’t get me hooked.

‘Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll be back in Arbroath again after this weekend,’ he said. ‘I’m only back for the school reunion tonight, then I’m heading back to Edinburgh.’

Gary got a look of panic in his eyes. Both Jack and David turned to look at him as he spluttered a little into his beer.

‘I’m n-n-not very good at public speaking,’ he said, stuttering as if to prove his point. ‘Plus I’m not very good with kids either. And I don’t really know what happened with Colin, so I really don’t know if…’

‘Fine, if you don’t want to,’ said Jack. ‘But it could make all the difference to some poor young bastard.’

No pressure, thought David as he sat drinking his pint and feeling relieved. He looked at Gary and felt sorry for him, but rather him than me, he thought.

Gary crumbled under the pressure and agreed to try and speak to some of the older kids sometime in the next week. Jack unearthed a pen from somewhere in his jacket and wrote Gary’s number down on the margin of the newspaper. He had got what he wanted but didn’t seem in any hurry to leave.

‘Either of you lads ever see Neil Cargill these days? You used to hang about with him, didn’t you? The four of you, in your own wee gang.’

‘Never seen him,’ said David.

‘Not in years,’ said Gary.

‘Did you say you were here for a class reunion?’ said Jack.

‘Yeah, just down the road at Bally’s,’ said David.

‘I think it’s called the Waterfront now,’ said Gary into his pint.

‘I’m still getting over the name change from Smokies,’ said Jack, chuckling to himself. ‘That’s what happens when you live in a place like Arbroath as long as I have, the pubs all change their names so frequently that there’s no point in trying to keep up.’

‘That happens in Edinburgh too, right enough,’ said David.

‘Do you think Neil will be at the reunion?’ asked Jack.

‘Doubt it,’ said Gary. ‘Haven’t seen him around in ages, don’t know what he’s been up to.’

‘Shame,’ said Jack. ‘It’s always good for old friends to catch up, relive old times.’

‘You think?’ said David.

‘Of course,’ said Jack. ‘Don’t you?’

David had doubts but said nothing. He tried to picture what Neil Cargill would look like now. He was always the most direct, no-bullshit, no-nonsense member of the ADS when they’d hung out together, something matched by his physique – stocky, barrel torso; short, powerful legs; and a dark, serious face that turned veiny when he got agitated. He had never been any good academically and that, combined with dyslexia diagnosed too late, had meant that he’d re-sat a year at primary school. He was a year older than the rest of them, yet he was still in remedial English. He’d had a much older brother Craig who at the age of eighteen, when Neil was only eleven, had somehow managed to wrap his car around a tree on the back road to Arbirlot on a clear spring evening. The police estimated he must’ve been doing over ninety miles an hour. He died instantly. Neil had carried that weight around with him, occasionally falling into sombre moods only to snap out of them with bursts of aggressive excitement at nothing in particular.

Despite all that, Neil had been a good friend to the other three, always reliable and willing to back them up in a stand-off, which was pretty handy because he was one of the hardest kids in town when it came to fist fighting. And despite being short he definitely looked his extra year, easily swanning into offies, pubs and Breakers’ snooker hall confidently at the front, getting the round in and covering for the rest of them. Driven by a need to impress his parents – who were much older than David’s, Colin’s or Gary’s folks, and who were burdened by the same desperate sadness over Craig’s death that Neil carried – he’d set his heart on joining the Marines from secondary school onwards. The Condor base just outside Arbroath was home to the 45 Commando Unit, and they did a lot of recruiting from the local schools, but it was made pretty clear that only the fittest and hardest need even bother applying for the Marines, the rest could fuck off to the regular army or fuck off entirely. Neil had no problems with fitness or hardness, but he did struggle with the basic literacy and numeracy requirements, until finally, with the help of a rather hippyish dyslexia specialist that he paid for out of his own Saturday job wages, he passed the Marines’ entrance exam in June of 1988. Basic training started two months later, so Neil had spent the summer relaxing and drinking.

So had the Marines worked out? Were his parents proud? Hadn’t Gary said he’d joined the police? There were so many holes in David’s knowledge of the past, of the collective past of this town, there wasn’t a hope in hell of him ever catching up, even if he wanted to. He wondered if Neil would come along tonight, and thought it would be good if he did.

He looked at his watch.

‘Shit, it’s coming on seven o’clock,’ he said, quickly arsing the rest of his pint and nudging Gary. ‘We better get a bend on. I’ve gotta get back to the B&B and get something to eat before I head back out.’

‘We could just stay out,’ said Gary. ‘It’s only just down the road to Bally’s.’

It was tempting, but David had had seven or eight pints and nothing to eat, and he needed to freshen up and get his shit together for meeting Nicola. Christ, he hadn’t thought about Nicola for hours. He tried to picture their kiss from last night, but it seemed blurry and murky already in his memory, as if viewed from the bottom of the Keptie Pond. He hoped he’d get the opportunity to refresh that memory tonight.

Both David and Gary got up to leave, Jack waving his pint glass at them nonchalantly as they pushed their stools back. ‘I’ll give you a phone through the week, Gary,’ he said. ‘Sort out the details for this talk at the school.’ Gary looked pained at the reminder, but smiled thinly anyway.

‘Cheers Jack, nice meeting you again,’ said David.

‘Aye, and all the best to you too, David. Enjoy yourselves tonight, the pair of you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

They pushed through the smoky babble of the pub and out the door, into the fresh air of a beautifully sunny Scottish evening. David felt the sun on his face and couldn’t believe how good the weather had been recently. He patted Gary on the shoulder and arranged to meet him in an hour and a half in Bally’s along with the other dregs of Keptie High School’s class of ’88. The thought didn’t fill him with dread, and as he walked purposefully up to the High Common he even started to hum a nondescript tune.